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2.03.2007

So, I had heard that there were quite a few classic movies that have passed into public domain and can now be had for cheap or free. Apparently a lot of these films were never properly copyrighted when released, and no longer have a parent company to distribute them. This is why you occasionally see the piles of $1 DVD's at WalMart and BigLots. These films don't cost the distributor anything in royalties. They only pay the duplication costs.

I found are few sites where you can find these movies:

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/Public Domain Torrents has links to various torrents, usually in DivX format and formatted in a variety of flavors like PC, Palm, iPod, PSP, and PocketPC. (and often links to one hosted on Google Video)

http://www.openflix.com/OpenFlix doesn't link to the torrents directly, but maintains a list of films and attempts to verify their legal status.

Most of these are old Black & White Sci-Fi and westerns, but there are some fun Kung-Fu movies and even old cartoons out there. Some are worth watching, just for laughs at the bad acting and story. For me, old sci-fi is like cheap chocolate...you know the quality is bad...but chocolate is chocolate. (and sci-fi is sci-fi) It's still fun when all is said and done.